


House Of Memories

by afangirlsplaylist



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Angst, Christianity, Emotional Infidelity, Emotions, M/M, Memories, Prompt Fic, Song Lyrics, Song fic, discussion of religion, house of memories, referenced homphobia, rhink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 22:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11022504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afangirlsplaylist/pseuds/afangirlsplaylist
Summary: Link’s journey through the house of memories he has with Rhett.





	House Of Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audienceofdoubt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audienceofdoubt/gifts).



> Written as a giveaway for @audienceofdoubt on Tumblr :)

The memories two people share are usually simple but the house of memories he had with Rhett was an overwhelming maze of a place - more full to bursting than some marriages. There were closets full of shared heartbreak; a sunroom full of childhood play dates and more rooms than they cared to admit.

Then there were the locked doors to the few rooms they didn’t share. When they had a big fight Link could almost feel Rhett tugging at the door to one of his, hoping he would open up and let him in. Sometimes when it was bad enough, they stayed on separate ends of the place, keeping several locked doors between them. There was one room in particular even Link himself tried to avoid, the key kept close to his chest.

The only light it gave out was a pulsing deep red visible under the crack of the door. It seemed to hum and beckon him inside whenever he looked at Rhett and felt anything deeper than friendship. It scared him every day yet he still spent year upon year locked inside.

* * *

__**♫ If you’re a lover, you should know  
The lonely moments just get lonelier  
The longer you’re in love  
Then if you were alone ♫**

* * *

Growing up he’d needed Rhett more than anything. Rhett Mclaughlin; the popular boy, the basketball star, the ladies man, the intimidating tall guy and the definition of a big brother type. It was all that had gotten him through the worst of grade school and a revolving door of step siblings. On the darkest nights, he’d play a lonely game of solitaire in his room - sobbing silently and imagining that it was only a matter of time before his surrogate brother left him too. Except he never did.

Rhett stayed with him through middle school, then high school, and finally college. Even when the time in third grade came for Rhett to choose to leave he said no with a sharp punch to John Carson’s gut. Then he kept saying no - again, and again, until the times all blended together and Link had no idea which one was the point he fell in love with him.

Now that he was older and wiser he thought maybe he’d have been better off if Rhett had left him alone. It definitely would have hurt less than watching him love somebody else. He toyed with the idea of what would’ve happened if he’d been sick or placed in a different class that one day. Maybe he’d have a different best friend he didn’t want so bad, or no real best friend at all. But if he was being honest with himself he’d probably still have fallen in love with Rhett anyway - even if hadn’t written a single thing on his desk.

They should teach you what that kind of pain feels like, he often thought. He would sacrifice all the algebra in the world just for that lesson. No one taught him how to deal with love like this, or how all-consuming it could become. He would have welcomed even a little warning, maybe even a buzzing alarm, to let him know what that tall kid two desks over was going to do to him.

* * *

**_♫ Memories turn into daydreams become a taboo  
_ _I don’t want to be afraid  
_ _The deeper that I go  
_ ** _It takes my breath away ♫_

* * *

He was scared of what he felt whenever they sat on their rocks and he looked into Rhett’s eyes, marveling at the way the sunlight bounced off the water and fell onto his face. He could feel himself falling in deeper every second he looked - as if he had actually slipped off his rock and submerged himself in the cool creek.

He could practically feel the cold of the water whenever he was told how wrong those feelings were - by his parents, by his church, and by classmates. Yet he couldn’t turn the feelings off like they all said he should. The confusion pulled him in deeper, suffocating him until he was drowning. It was a long time before he managed to fight his way to the surface, clawing for air as he broke free and accepted it.

He’d felt better when he stopped trying to make himself fall in love with girls the way he loved Rhett - and settled for finding ones he liked well enough. Rhett didn’t need to know why he ignored so many of them, and he was fine with Rhett thinking he was just clueless and oblivious. They were beautiful and attractive - but they weren’t Rhett.

* * *

__**♫ Soft hearts electric souls  
Heart to heart and eyes to eyes  
Is this taboo? ♫**

* * *

Still, he couldn’t help feeling enraged every time he chose to settle. How could it be taboo to love someone the way he did? Someone he’d known almost as long as he had been alive. What was the difference, really, between a chaste kiss and the platonic hugs they’d shared a million times?

The difference, he’d been told, was a one-way ticket to hell. So he dressed in his suits every Sunday, rolling up the long sleeves and walking into church with his family and the McLaughlin’s. He kept one eye closed and one eye fixed upon Rhett as they prayed, almost turning his knuckles white with how hard he was clasping them. He prayed for understanding and reassurance, and he took every day that Rhett was still with him for an answer.

He was answered again when they went away to the same college, and again when Rhett agreed to quit their jobs together. Even when he walked through the chapel doors with his own children he still gave a small sigh of thanks that God didn’t smite him at the threshold.  

Part of him felt like God was laughing at him, forcing him to spend every day surrounded by the very temptation he was asking to be absolved of. The other half of him refused to believe that any divine being could deny two souls and hearts that were joined together so strongly - like electricity and magnetism. So he turned a deaf ear to all the lies that told him it was wrong and resorted to hated himself for lying to Rhett instead.

His soft heart could never resist the pull of him. Even after he had married Christy and Rhett moved out he still had the power to rope him in with his eyes and laugh. It scared him how easily he would turn his life upside down if Rhett asked him too, but he couldn’t help it. 

* * *

_**♫ Baby we built this house  
On memories ♫** _

* * *

Any fear he had about committing to Rhett evaporated the day they’d signed the papers branding their company ‘Mythical Entertainment’. The company and the name itself was so intimately THEM that for months he had to blink and shake his head to believe it was even real. There was something special about modeling it after the day they met - like it was a cumulation of what they’d been building since then. 

Every plaque hanging in the studio was a memory. Memories of after parties where he’d almost said too much with his bubble of happiness and a few glasses of liquor in him. Memories of the hours they’d spent tirelessly working themselves to the bone in Rhett’s old basement. Even walking in the doors of the studio brought back memories of a million car pools, when he’d had to fight the urge to keep driving them on to somewhere no one knew them, a quiet place where he could lean over and kiss him like he wanted.

* * *

_**♫ Take my picture now  
Shake it til you see it ♫** _

* * *

He’d hold his breath whenever Rhett would caress him unnecessarily for a wheel ending, or whenever he saw himself pop up on Rhett’s Instagram. He’d examine the loving light and careful angles of each photo Rhett took of him, telling himself it meant more than it did.

He ignored the stubborn and logical part of his mind that told him it meant nothing. That Rhett was just a perfectionist and good with a camera. But there was a much louder part that clung hard to the thought of Rhett trying to capture something he couldn’t say in those photos. So he pretended to be embarrassed and annoyed, tweeting publicly that he would take vengeance for it even as the picture made him smile and his heart pang with longing.

* * *

__**♫ And when your fantasies  
Become your legacy  
Promise me a place  
In your house of memories ♫**

* * *

He worried every day that when everything was said and done and Good Mythical Morning was over that they’d have nothing. Not money, they had enough of that. He worried that when it was over, the only thing left to them would be fantasies. Fantasies of what could have been and what almost was.

Their legacy would be a reel of almost kisses, nervous giggles, and ghosting hands. Or a slideshow of his obvious glances from every other episode.

Most of all he worried that Rhett would take that one last chance to leave, saying his goodbyes the second the last bit of the set was packed away. Then all he would have left of him would be the forbidden daydreams he had of them together - never confessed.

* * *

_**♫ I think of you from time to time  
More than I thought I would ♫** _

* * *

Rhett had no idea how often he thought of him, or how fast his mind raced after one of Rhett’s lingering touches. He couldn’t count how many times he’d been woken up by a text after dreaming of the guy - saying he was going to be running late because a breakfast Jessie made him needed his full attention.

Even as he read the texts he’d wipe a hand over his flushed face, with the images of his friend’s body still running through his head. It was just one more thing that told him Rhett didn’t think of him the same way, or anywhere near as often.

It took him by surprise when the dreams and the thoughts first started. No one expected to think of their best friend that much and that intensely, until the first dream they can vividly remember happens. 

* * *

__**♫ You were just too kind  
And I was too young to know  
That’s all that really matters  
I was a fool ♫**

* * *

He regularly thought back to how they used to be - just a couple of typical, troublemaking boys from the south. The simple time that came before his heart was warped and twisted by what Rhett would become to him. He thought about it and he felt like a fraud.

The young Link that called Rhett bro and talked about girls was like an entirely different person. There were albums of photos of this other guy grinning or staring at Rhett over toys and birthday cakes and when he looked at those photos now he knew that kid was a big fat liar. 

* * *

_**♫ Those thoughts of past lovers  
They’ll always haunt me ♫** _

* * *

His heart would crumble whenever Rhett would bring a girl home back in college, tearing into smaller pieces whenever he caught sight of a pair of panties or a full head of hair cascading down the side of Rhett’s bed. It disintegrated entirely the day Rhett married Jessie, and even when he got married himself it was never quite whole again.

It hurt to think that even now there were still parts of Rhett he could never have. His friend’s lips were taken like candy by plump, lipsticked, feminine, mouths. His beard was caressed by hands that would never be his and he would never feel Rhett’s body pressed against him in that way.

It haunted him whenever Rhett would be right up next to him, coming dangerously close to giving away those parts of him but never close enough.

* * *

__**♫ I wish I could believe  
You’d never wrong me  
Then will you remember  
Me in the same way  
As I remember you ♫**

* * *

Despite all the girlfriends they’d never betrayed each other. Rhett would say their relationship was one of one hundred percent trust and technically, he wasn’t wrong. There was no need for him to know that he hurt him every day without realizing it. That his soul felt wronged whenever he looked at him across the desk with his full attention. Or that he felt warm, comfortable and sleepy whenever they did something that should have been ‘awkward’. Rhett would thank him - he did his part by playing along. 

It was unbelievably torturous but he knew that Rhett would never do it intentionally. None of the stolen glances meant he thought about him the same way - even if, 11 seasons in, he still kind of hoped that they did. 

* * *

_**♫ Promise me a place  
In your house of memories ♫** _

* * *

When they’d signed the oath and watched their blood dry into the paper they’d signed more than just a promise. They’d signed part of themselves over to each other forever. It wasn’t in the way that Link wanted but it was still a place and he was happy to have it.

After all - a few looked doors are better than nothing at all. 


End file.
